You make a formidable companion,
dirty old man:
how often have I run my sweaty palms
along the ribcage of your words,
how often have I licked you, sucked,
devoured you?
I eat you, but my setting is not right:
it is heart-wrenchingly serene
where it should be filthy,
a big-city-dump dystopia –
or was this in my Ginsberg? –
however, no sunflowers, just a sun,
a beach, a hankering
da-dee-da and a bottle of rum
which I gulp down not as eagerly as you do
as the light melts on the shore
and the sand-grain ovens chill:
I am somehow stuck, knee-deep,
in no particular yesterday
and no significant tomorrow,
but I got booze, salt in my lungs,
and a frantic urge to fuck –
not to make love, to FUCK --
and damn man,
that’s poetry too.
Author notes
Option 2
A contest entry
- You Choose - No Rules by Dalaney.
1200 points, ended December 6, 2008, 23 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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I wonder if Bukowski Beach would be more (alliteratively) apt?
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Whoa!
Quite a number there. Especially since I share your Bukowski influence. Can't agree more. But check out the site and see what the members/moderators think. My ten cents later.
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i love it. raw & clear.
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I think you did an amazing piece -
my only suggestion would be to attach
the fourth stanza to the third - it loses
it's flow when you suddenly drop into
another stanza beginning with the word,
'which'. Other than that small critique, I
certainly loved reading this poem.
Love, Lane -
It's amazing the attention that Bukowski still commands, his disciples and devotees outwriting him! He would curse and grumble, but be secretly pleased.
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There are points of this that really scream of Bukowski -- especially the last 2 stanzas. It's all solid and well written, a fine tribute to the man. I love the lines:
'how often have I run my sweaty palms
along the ribcage of your words,
how often have I licked you, sucked,
devoured you?
I eat you, but my setting is not right:
it is heart-wrenchingly serene
where it should be filthy,
a big-city-dump dystopia –'
That's great imagery. The Ginsberg line that follows kind of threw me a bit, but on the second reading it wasn't as bad.
Good luck in the contest.
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